Holding encroachers to account

Although encroachment of public land is a problem common to all big cities, the worst offenders seem to be concentrated in Karachi. From footpaths to amenity plots and storm water drains to disused circular railway tracks, nothing is spared. This of course goes on with the collusion of relevant authorities. The more valuable the illegal land grab higher the level of official involvement, as a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed discovered in the course of the proceedings of a case pertaining to the unauthorised construction of a building on the land meant for a drain. In a previous hearing, the court had ordered its demolition. But instead of compliance during Thursday's hearing Acting Director General of the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) tried to justify allotment of the land on the basis of documents believed to have been forged to forestall unfavourable verdict.

The court's observations on the issue must have resonated widely with the denizens of Karachi and beyond. Directing the Chief Minister to immediately remove the acting DG, the court noted that apparently the SBCA had compromised on rules and pushed Karachi to the brink of a disaster, and that the DG had become a rubberstamp unable to take decisions as per the law. The court also put on notice the owner of a recently-constructed building adjacent to the Benazir Shaheed Park, on being informed that the plot actually was a part of the park. Taking up yet another encroachment case, the court ordered the city Mayor to remove the remaining intrusions into the Kidney Hill Park land and submit a compliance report. The list of irregularities and illegalities goes on and on. It can only be hoped the apex court's intervention will have a sobering effect on the land grabbers and their influential patrons.

A complicated issue though is construction of dwellings on the circular railway track. They have to be removed for the revival of train traffic. But the ongoing demolition drive, seen on TV screens, evokes public sympathies as the affectees claiming to be poor people with nowhere to go demand the government provide them with alternative accommodation. However, it is a fact that most of such illegal colonies are owned by single persons and are rented out, hence there is no justification whatsoever to regularize them and reward violators with public property. More to the point, those who occupied railway lands did that knowingly and hence do not deserve to be provided with alternative housing at government expense. Nonetheless, this would not have happened had the authorities concerned taken notice of the illegitimate activity and stopped it in its tracks. Failure to take timey action may have encouraged many unsuspecting families to use their meagre resources to construct their homes on abandoned railway tracks. They need to be heard and given sympathetic consideration on case by case basis.